Tesla to charge for road trip 'leccy, promises it will cost less than petrol Tesla has abandoned its practice of offering free electricity at its Supercharger facilities, the 'leccy car charging network it has built to enable long-distance journeys. The company will now offer new buyers credits for 400 kWh of electricity, which translat3s to about 1,600km (1,000 miles) of driving each year, or about …
"Better to have a Lead Acid battery system for your PV panels"
How so? They hate deep discharge cycles so for any kind of longevity you have to install twice the capacity you actually need. They weigh an absolute ton and I've certainly seen lead-acid arrays explode in the past. How much strength do I need to add to my utility room floor to take the weight of a giant lead acid array?
Or use Lithium-Iron (note the R!), aka LiFePO4: It's like the Lithium-Cobalt-ion chemistry used in mobile phones (and Tesla's products), but it has the disadvantage of being slightly less energy-dense and quite a bit more expensive (although much of that is due to manufacturing economies-of-scale in favour of LiCo). In exchange for that, you get a far longer lifetime, higher current delivery, dimensional stablity, much greater resistance to mechanical mishandling, and, somewhat importantly for use in a dwelling: a battery that can't spontaneously combust even if it's hit by something heavy.
Currently, it's targeted for the applications currently using Lead-acid packs, but I think it has a good future as a home storage system,
It does get me, the fuss had over electric cars as if they're something new, when I grew up in the 80's being woken by the sound of jingling bottles and an electric whine. And they were far from new even then.
Hint: If you have to subsidise free electricity for your users, and set up hundreds of roadside charging systems, and get them to install charging systems at home, and sell them replacement batteries, etc. maybe this tech isn't as profitable or renewable as anything since the 1960's milk floats first woke up spotty teenagers...
>> "Better to have a Lead Acid battery system for your PV panels"
> How so?
Recycling... Lead Acid Batteries have been recycled quite easily for decades.
You buy batteries, you return them back to the same place you buy them.
They chunk 'em, float 'em, skim 'em, and make new batteries.
Newer batteries are constantly being invented and I am not convinced that the poisonous components are truly being completely recycled on a global basis. I wonder if they are just poisoning our land & water.
"Newer batteries are constantly being invented and I am not convinced that the poisonous components are truly being completely recycled on a global basis. "
The material in the latest promising LI technology is "olivine" - if you haven't heard of it that won't be surprising unless you're a geologist, but it's one of the most common minerals on the planet and comprises about 1/3 of what comes out of the average volcano.
" They weigh an absolute ton and I've certainly seen lead-acid arrays explode in the past."
No need for an explosion. All you need is an out of control charging circuit boiling the things.
Suphuric acid fumes turn most PVC black. Have you ever tried to tell the black wire apart from the black wire (which was red when you installed it) from the black wire (yellow) from the black wire (green) ?
Not to mention what happens to any exposed metals in such an event.
"*never piss on an electric fence - lesson learned at 8 years old."
Actually, just stand further than 18 or so inches away. Unless you've got a really special pee-pee, what looks like a solid stream is actually individual droplets (laminar vs. turbulent flow). Now, the trick is to get your buddy to stand a little bit closer.
Indeed that's the plan. Tesla sees it's acquisition of SolarCity as highly complementary, and not just to the Musk/Rive families. The synergistic combination of car, PowerWall, and panels creates the perfect ecosystem for the Tesla Owner's Solar Home. Simply take your Model S (90kWh), your Powerwall2 (13.5kWh) and your solar tiles (unspecified) and you're free to motor!
In addition, Tesla owners can contribute to reducing traffic congestion in the process, ie 400kWh/1,000 miles means you'll get an extra 5.5 miles from your own storage and charging system! If you need more, our sales people will be only too happy to quote for additional Powerwall2 units. And if you need extra space for more units, or more solar tiles, why not contact Tesla Realty to discuss purchase of a larger home?
In the USA, maintenance of the Federal interstate highway system is paid for by a tax on gasoline (about 18c per gallon). States add an average of 30c/gallon on top of this, with varying percentages of that going towards road infrastructure. A pittance by European standards, but still a significant portion of the cost of fuel.
Once electric cars become popular, they'll stop being given a free pass on the taxes. Probably in terms of some kind of weight-tax, because it's very hard to tax electricity used for cars differently to electricity used for domestic heat/light/cooking.
In Europe, there's plenty of ways already to tax electric cars (road tax, registration taxes, etc), but they're just disabled for now.
"In the USA, maintenance of the Federal interstate highway system is paid for by a tax on gasoline (about 18c per gallon). States add an average of 30c/gallon on top of this, with varying percentages of that going towards road infrastructure."
Road infrastructure may be used by cars (and mostly paid for by car drivers) but the _vast_ majority of damage done to them (requiring repair) is done by HGVs.
A 8 ton rigid body vehicle (ie: An average 40 seater bus) does a LOT more damage than 40 cars.
The damage done by a vehicle is more or less proportional to the 5th power of axle weight multiplied by the square of velocity. It's one of the reasons that HGVs are speed restricted and banned from light duty roads.
Oh yes - so much for the promise of free power when travelling long distance. Now, key question: does this apply to new cars or all cars? If it applies to all cars, we're facing selling on the basis of misleading advertising - which is legally actionable..
Well, back to my original plans then. Tesla is will remain only a choice for the countries where I mainly drive in the city.
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@AC above,
As the previous poster has mentioned, this was clearly covered in the article.
So you are clearly an idiot. Why did you feel the need to post without researching the facts presented RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU first? Are you just a lazy bastard? Do you have a reading comprehension problem?
I feel we have a right to know. Idiot, lazy, or retarded?
I feel we have a right to know.
You can feel all you want, but that doesn't create an obligation on my part.
But I'm feeling charitabel
Idiot, lazy, or retarded?
Neither. I PBC*-ed, always a mistake. On the plus side, it shows I'm a human.
* Posting Before Coffee.
But I'm feeling charitabel
~ble, of course. That's the pain with auto-correct: by the time you have killed it off you're used to it, which is why everyone keeps typing 'teh" instead of retraining that muscle memory for "the". Oh well.
I never understood it to be a guaranteed free for all(time). Having run one in the UK for the last 14 months, and with the advantage of having to be in Edinburgh, Manchester or Bristol at some point in almost all of my longish drives (I slum it on a bicycle for everything local - feels smug :-) it has acted as a mild subsidy to a frankly ludicrous price over 70,000 miles or so. Never bothered with the fast charger at home though.
So, what is the replacement battery cost? Bearing in mind there are very few other expensive parts that wear out in electric cars (compared with ICU cars with engine, gearbox etc), if replacing the battery pack is expensive, it might still be a worthwhile expense to get a car that lasts another ten years.
A quick google doesn't give exact figures - the Tesla replacement program says $12k for a battery pack, but outside of that some people claim $45k (2014 prices). I would expect that to half by the time the gigafactory comes on line. So $20-$25K get a Tesla S back on the road with another 10 years of driving. Almost complete guesswork on the figures though.
That's pretty good for that sort of car. The market will clearly define the pricing.
Suspension components (Bushings, shocks, springs), drivetrain components (bearings, gears, driveshafts, homokinetic couplings, etc), motor controllers (Which can and do break sometimes), aircon units, heater units, head/taillight assemblies (Since LEDs don't last forever but can't be replaced individually these will have to be replaced at some point), onboard computer systems, charge controllers, brake components, and probably a lot of other stuff I'm missing.
Don't assume electric vehicles have no wear components, because they do. Lots of them. Basically anything that is also inside a petrol car, except for the IC engine itself and some piping. And IC engines are not very often the source of problems on used cars. It's mostly all the other stuff that breaks.
Also, given how shodilly the average Tesla I've encountered is put together there is no way in hell I'll ever buy one first hand, let alone second hand. New batterypack or no.
I have a Ford hybrid with a much smaller battery pack.
Dealer price for the replacement is $3000 but the scrap yards are full of batteries for $700-800
all from cars with front end damage.
Most internal combustion cars in scrap yards aren't there because they wore out after 200,000mi - no reason to think things are different for electrics
None of the items quoted by iamanidiot are particularly expensive to replace (I've done all except aircon and electric specific stuff on my car, currently on 252k miles), and none are particular prone to wearing out in a <100k timescale.
With regard to quality of manufacture, that may be true, but is something that generally gets better over time. Especially with new manufacturers.
"Don't assume electric vehicles have no wear components, because they do. Lots of them."
And EVs are _heavy_. I noticed this when testing a Leaf. Took it to my local mechanical wizard and we stuck it on a lifter - the body is based on one of Nissan's lighter vehicles and the suspension hasn't been beefed up much to cope with the extra 300kg of mass.
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400 kWh times (say) $0.15 each = $60.00
"free potato" is how my wife would describe such stinginess.
My used ("CPO") car came with a full tank, $80 worth of gas.
To be fair, if the Tesla can squeeze "1600 km" out of $60, that's about one-half the cost per km.
But, while a Tesla might be better in the quarter mile, my car can cover 1600km faster than the Tesla.
My problem with electric cars is simple. It takes 30 minutes at these superchargers to travel 170 miles. Whereas, my gasoline engine takes 5 minutes to travel 400 miles. Electric cars will take off only when you can drive several hundred miles after a 5 minute recharge.
The idea behind superchargers is that if you are doing long distance travel you will not be traveling all that distance in a single go, and you take breaks anyway for "personal relief", meals and rest. So if you can do those stops at a supercharger then your vehicle is recharged by the time you finish a break. This ofcourse ignores tagteaming and just switching drivers after a short 10 minute break for necessities.
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